But I Say to You, Love Your Enemies, Part 1

You have heard that it was said, "You shall love your
neighbor, and hate your enemy." But I say to you, love your
enemies, and pray for those who persecute you in order that you may
be sons of your Father who is in heaven; for He causes His sun to
rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and
the unrighteous. For if you love those who love you, what reward
have you? Do not even the tax-gatherers do the same? And if you
greet your brothers only, what do you do more than others? Do not
even the Gentiles do the same? Therefore you are to be perfect, as
your heavenly Father is perfect.

We will take at least two weeks on this text and the command
that we love our enemies. Today we try to get the big picture of
the Sermon on the Mount and how its commandments relate to the
whole ministry of Jesus. Next week we will move in on the specific
command to love our enemies and see how it looks in practice.

How the Great Commission Helps Us Understand This Love
Command

Let's step back for a moment and let something Jesus said at the
end of his life wave a banner over this commandment to love our
enemies.

One of the last things Jesus said after he died and rose from
the dead and before he ascended to heaven was this:

All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth.
19 Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing
them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, 20
teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am
with you always, even to the end of the age. (Matthew
28:18–20)

Now this is extremely important for understanding our text today
in Matthew 5:43–48 about loving our enemies.

Jesus says, go everywhere and make disciples. This includes
bringing them to faith and allegiance in Christ expressed in
baptism. And it includes teaching them to do all that he
commanded—verse 20: "teaching them to observe all that I
commanded you." And he said to do this to the end of the this
age—"I am with you always to the end of the age." This is
important because there are many teachers in the larger church
today who in fact deny the "all" in this command—"Teach them
to observe all that I have commanded you."

Does Not Negate Grace

Some say that the commandments of Jesus in the Sermon on the
Mount (Matthew 5–7) are not for this age. They are like the Old
Testament Law coming before the cross and should not be part of the
normative teaching of the church in this age. The main motive here
is the fear that law will be mixed in with grace and we will
contaminate the gospel of free grace by the teachings of Jesus that
make love a condition for finally entering the kingdom of heaven.
The assumption is that wherever you have conditions, you don't have
grace. And wherever you have grace, you don't have conditions. So
they have developed elaborate justifications for not taking the
Sermon on the Mount seriously.

Is Not an Isolated Ethical Teaching

Another group of teachers goes in the other direction and denies
the "all" of Matthew 28:20 by affirming only the ethical
commandments of Jesus, and leaving out of account the crucial
things he did and said that prevent his commandments from becoming
mere ethics. This group prizes the Sermon on the Mount, but really
does run the risk of cutting it off from the gospel of salvation by
grace through faith.

So one group tries to protect the gospel of salvation by grace
through faith by putting the ethical teachings of Jesus into a
special category that doesn't apply to us today. And another group
tries to rescue the ethical teachings of Jesus even though they
don't think the other deeds and words of Jesus about salvation and
faith and grace are essential.

I think Matthew 28:20 steers us between both of these views, and
says we should observe ALL that Jesus commanded us—and that
we should do this as long as this age lasts, not just for some
distant future time or past time—because all authority
belongs to Jesus and he will be with us to the end of the age. So
when I read the Sermon on the Mount, I take it to refer to me and
my family and this church, and all people Christ wants us to
disciple among all the nations. And, until I see otherwise from the
Word, I assume that the Sermon on the Mount does not contradict the
way of salvation that Jesus and his apostles taught.

The Context of This Command: Six Statements

So let's go back and look at the command to love our enemies in
its context—both the nearby context and the bigger context of
the gospels. Matthew 5:43–44 is the last of six statements in the
Sermon on the Mount that begin, "You have heard that it was said .
. . but I say to you." The series of six statements begins in 5:21.
Just before this series, in 5:20 Jesus says,

For I say to you, that unless your righteousness surpasses
that of the scribes and Pharisees, you shall not enter the kingdom
of heaven.

Then come the six statements: "You have heard that it was said .
. . but I say to you." I take this to mean that Jesus is explaining
in these six statements what the righteousness looks like that he
requires beyond what the scribes and Pharisees require.

Verse 21: "You have heard that the ancients were told, 'You
shall not commit murder' and 'Whoever commits murder shall be
liable to the court.' 22 But I say to you that everyone who is
angry with his brother shall be guilty before the court."

Verse 27: "You have heard that it was said, 'You shall not
commit adultery' 28 but I say to you, that everyone who looks on a
woman to lust for her has committed adultery with her already in
his heart."

Verse 31: "And it was said, 'Whoever sends his wife away, let
him give her a certificate of divorce'; 32 but I say to you that
everyone who divorces his wife, except for the cause of unchastity,
makes her commit adultery."

Verse 33: "Again, you have heard that the ancients were told,
'You shall not make false vows, but shall fulfill your vows to the
Lord.' 34 But I say to you, make no oath at all, either by heaven,
for it is the throne of God, or by the earth, for it is his
footstool."

Verse 38: "You have heard that it was said, 'An eye for an eye,
and a tooth for a tooth.' 39 But I say to you, do not resist him
who is evil."

So what Jesus is doing here in these six commandments is showing
his disciples how some of the scribes and Pharisees applied the Old
Testament teachings, and then, over against that, what he was
calling them to do—something different, or something
deeper.

So when verse 20 says, "For I say to you, that unless your
righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you
shall not enter the kingdom of heaven," he was saying, "There is a
way of life—there is an authentic, deep, unhypocritical way
of life—that you must live if you want to arrive in heaven."
He is not saying: I have an impossible standard of righteousness
that you can never meet, and so stop trying to meet it, and trust
in my righteousness. That's not what he is saying. He is saying,
"If you will come to me, and trust in me, and receive the power of
the kingdom, and be cleansed on the inside by the forgiveness and
love of God that I offer, and bank your hope on all my promises,
and let my ransoming death cover all your failures and
imperfections, then you WILL be able to live this way (not
perfectly, but powerfully), and your life will be the light of the
world that proves you are the children of God."

Evidencing Conversion, Not Earning Salvation

In other words, Jesus is assuming that something very profound
has happened to people who live the way the Sermon on the Mount
calls us to live. Let me try to show you why I think that, and what
it is that has to happen to us so that we can live this way and
surpass the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees—not to
earn our way to heaven but to show that God has graciously and
powerfully changed us and promised us heaven.

Look at verse 44–45:

But I say to you, love your enemies, and pray for those who
persecute you, in order that you may be sons of your Father
who is in heaven.

Now someone might take this to mean that you must first become a
person who loves his enemies before you can be a child of
God. But it may also mean: love your enemies and so prove yourself
to be what you are—a child of God. That is, show you are a
child of God by acting the way your Father acts. If you are his,
then his character is in you, and you will be inclined to do what
he does. God loves his enemies—the evil and the
unrighteous—in sending rain and sunshine on them instead of
instant judgment.

"Let Your Light Shine Before Men"

I think that is, in fact, just what it means:
love your enemies
and so show that God is your Father. Why do I think that? Several
reasons. Let me just give two from the Sermon on the Mount. One
comes from Matthew 5:16,

Let your light shine before men in such a way that they may
see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in
heaven.

Notice two things: one is that Jesus speaks to his disciples and
calls God their Father. He does not say, "He may become
your Father." He says, "He is your Father." Second, notice
that when people see the good works of the disciples (like loving
their enemies), they give glory to our Father. Why? Because our
Father is in us helping us and enabling us to do the good works. If
we did the good works on our own so that we could then become
children of our Father, the world should see our good works and
give us the glory. So Jesus not only says that God is already the
Father of the disciples, but this is the very reason that they can
do the loving works they do. The light that they let shine IS the
light of their Father's love within them.

The Basis for the Golden Rule

The other reason I think Jesus means that loving our enemies is
not the cause but the evidence of our having God as our Father
comes from Matthew 7:11–12.

If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your
children, how much more shall your Father who is in heaven give
what is good to those who ask Him!

So here again Jesus tells his disciples that God is their
Father—even though they are imperfect in their love (he calls
them "evil")—and that he stands more ready to give us the
help we need than we are to give our own children help when they
ask.

Then—and this is the crucial point—in verse 12 Jesus
draws this conclusion from his teaching about the love of God's
Fatherhood in verse 11:

Therefore, however you want people to treat you, so treat
them, for this is the Law and the Prophets.

The word "therefore" is crucial here. It means that the golden
rule is based on the loving, prayer-answering, Father-heart of God.
God will answer your prayers and take care of you . . . THEREFORE,
love others the way you want to be loved. In other words, Jesus
makes our love for others the result or fruit of God's fatherly
love for us, not the payment we make to become his children.

So when Jesus says, back in Matthew 5:44, "But I say to you,
love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you, 45 in
order that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven,"
he does not mean that loving our enemies earns us the right to be a
child of God. You can't earn the status of a child. You can be born
into it. You can be adopted into it. You can't work your way into
it. Jesus means that loving our enemies shows that God has already
become our Father, and that the only reason we are able to love our
enemies is because he loves us and has met our needs first.

Good Trees Bearing Good Fruit

Another clue in the Sermon on the Mount that this is the way
Jesus is thinking is found in Matthew 7:16–17,

You will know them by their fruits. Grapes are not gathered
from thorn bushes, nor figs from thistles, are they? Even so, every
good tree bears good fruit; but the bad tree bears bad
fruit.

What Jesus is saying is that you cannot produce the fruit of
love in order to become a good tree. You have to become a good tree
in order to produce the fruit of love. Becoming a child of God and
being transformed on the inside—becoming a good
tree—precedes and enables love, not vice versa.

What the Sermon on the Mount Assumes

If you take the Sermon on the Mount as a whole, all the
commandments assume—they presuppose—that a profound
conversion has happened—a new birth—before our
righteousness surpasses the righteousness of the scribes and
Pharisees. We do not earn or merit our sonship or our entrance into
heaven. We receive it as a free gift and gracious promise, and then
we live in a way that shows where our treasure is and who our
Father is. Loving our enemies is a proof that the power of
the kingdom has entered your life, not a payment for the
power of the kingdom to enter your life.

The Sermon on the Mount and the command to love our enemies are
not isolated ethical teachings. They rise up out of a great
foundation of grace in the life and ministry of Jesus. Let me close
by making sure we see the outlines of that foundation. This is
where we get the power to love our enemies. This is how we become
the children of God.

The Great Foundation of Grace in Jesus' Life and Ministry

The very first word of the Sermon on the Mount—and this is
no mistake—is, "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is
the kingdom of heaven." We don't enter the kingdom of heaven
because of the moral resources that we bring; we enter by
confessing with tears our poverty of spirit.

In Mark 10:15 Jesus said, "Truly I say to you, whoever does not
receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it
at all." It is a gift to the poor in spirit who are broken and
childlike and have no airs of self-sufficiency.

In Mark 2:17 Jesus said, "It is not those who are healthy who
need a physician, but those who are sick; I did not come to call
the righteous, but sinners." We enter the kingdom poor in spirit,
helpless as a child, sick and in need of a spiritual physician.

This is what Jesus was doing when he ate with tax collectors and
sinners—he was pursuing the poor and the helpless and the
sick. And the self-sufficient murmured, "This man receives sinners
and eats with them" (Luke 15:2). And when they said that, Jesus
told them the parable of the prodigal son. And the point was: I
don't eat with sinners because I like sin. I eat with sinners
because I am the love of God welcoming home poor, helpless,
diseased sinners—forgiving them, cleansing them, making them
new, and sending them out to love in the power of God.

Which is why he could say to the priests and elders in Matthew
21:31, "Truly I say to you that the tax-gatherers and harlots are
going into the kingdom of God before you."

How can this be: sinners and harlots going into the kingdom of
God? The bottom line answer Jesus gave: "The Son of Man did not
come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for
many" (Mark 10:45). He came to die for them—for us.

The Sermon on the Mount and the command to love our enemies are
not isolated ethical teachings. They grow up out of a great
foundation of grace in the life and teaching of Jesus. This is
where we get the power to love—that he loved us while we were
poor and diseased and helpless and enemies, and gave himself for
us.

Now who are our enemies? And what does loving them actually look
like? That's what we will look at next week. Lord willing!

John Piper (@JohnPiper) is founder and teacher of desiringGod.org and chancellor of Bethlehem College & Seminary. For 33 years, he served as pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church, Minneapolis, Minnesota. He is author of more than 50 books.

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